RawGosia

Sweet fruity January

Blogging all my meals since October for fun. This is sweet fruity January.

What is my New Year resolution? To persevere. To not give up. To take the baby steps rather than giving up altogether. To keep going.

My cousin has passed away this month after a long battle with breast and then a liver cancer. She was only 49. I am sad. I miss her and I wish I spent more time with her. I am also more determined than ever to make people aware of the alternative lifestyle options. I feel that people deserve to know. Izabela, beautiful baby girl, you will not be forgotten. I am dedicating my raw awareness campaign to you.

I am still not over my love for passion fruit and I must admit that this love could be even stronger than my love for mangoes, for now. I developed somewhat a routine of preparing a bowlful of 10, and then doing it again and again, ending up with 40-50 passion fruit in one meal. In my view, various calculators fail to explain the amazing effect of this fruit by dissecting it into nutrients such as vitamins A and C, and iron. Although such information is interesting and can be useful, it is incomplete. There are many nutrients that we have not yet discovered, but above all, they all work together, in synergy, and it makes no sense to explain the power of nutrition by limiting it to the lab analysis. I feel that with every spoonful of passion fruit, my body fills up with a magical energy. I cannot fully explain it, but I can fully feel it.

I must be old fashioned I realized. Various people these days go on a raw diet for a couple of years or so and then become coaches and educators, write books and make money from raw. I told myself that I would spend at least 10 years exploring it. More than 11 years have passed and I can say that this decision was warranted. It takes time to learn the lessons, and earn the wisdom that I was lacking in my early years. Idealism may seem wonderful but people can get hurt and have got hurt from the ill-constructed advice by well-meaning but inexperienced coaches.

Also, purism, in my view, can be hurtful. It is not a coincidence that passionate purist raw vegan educators turn into cooked foodists or non-vegans. To me, purism, which often manifests in censorship of discussions on forums, is just the other side of the same coin. Lack of confidence. I believe that if you are not ready to discuss raw veganism openly, then you are not ready to be a raw vegan yet. Only when raw vegans learn to discuss issues in an open and respectful manner, we will be operating at a level that we are capable of. It is the fear that drives those who perceive any open discussion about raw veganism as an attack on the raw veganism itself. Fear is a sign of lack of confidence that the raw vegan lifestyle does not need defending. Confidence comes with education and experience. I hope to see more confidence in the raw community in the future. We are worth it.

After a couple of accidents (bad fall and back injury, car crash and chest injury) I am back to regular exercise. I am pleasantly surprised how quickly mo body can get back to the rhythm. I seem to not have lost my swimming muscles, and my first jog was easier than when I did this a few years ago when I got back to running. I feel that all the fruit I have been eating really helped in my recovery. It keeps me going despite my ‘old age’. Fruit really is amazing. I go to the pool, and after the usual 1km I do not feel completely wasted as I would before my non-raw years. I feel good. I believe that it is the extraordinary level of hydration that fruit gives the body, that is one of the main contributing factors behind this phenomenon. Other fruity people report how energized they feel on fruit too. Mine is not an isolated case!

I want to write a book. I want to tell a story. I want to share all that I have learned. The science, the magic and the beauty. I hope to find the time. In the meantime, I am here, sharing with you. Choose life. Choose raw. You deserve it.

This month I visited Bicheno and had a chance to observe little penguins again. I was amazed, again, watching these little creatures, who enter the ferocious ocean to catch fish for their baby every day, going in every morning, coming back every night. So small and yet so strong, to be able to withhold what they do. I felt anger too, at the thought of them having to go further and further, many kilometers away, as the humans continue to destroy their habitat by over-fishing and other unethical practices. One evening I spotted a baby penguin who went out of its nest, no doubt very hungry and eager to meet his/her mum, which made me worry about whether the mum had returned the previous day. It dawned on me how fragile life is.

I did some jogging on the beach there, in my special ‘shoes’.

Below is my January summary of my meals. As before, my focus is on general patterns, not quantities, and I do not necessarily record every single bite of a food. To give an idea of what my fruity day looks like.